Mr. Intro
The west coast racketeer called Mr. Intro (possibly an alias, first name unrevealed) was an underworld figure who conducted some of his criminal business in Dick Tracy's city. He was known to police as an expatriate and an international gangster Intro took great pains to conceal his identity. He habitually concealed his face behind a bullet-proof mask and would only talk behind a iron grill. He always carried a gun. His knuckles were misshapen and stricken with arthritis. He walked with the aid of a cane, leading his associates to assume that he was elderly. Intro worked with a "Board of Directors"- 12 subordinates whom he insisted must dress alike in matching suits, eyeglasses, and hats. When one of these men resisted Intro's plan and tried to shoot him, Intro shot and killed him. The Gold Deal with Purdy Fallar The criminal Purdy Fallar approached Mr. Intro with a scheme to smuggle a large quantity of gold from the Moon. This would destabilize the economy of the entire planet Earth, allowing Intro to gain power. Intro agreed to Fallar's plan, and arranged to meet Fallar and the gold on Intro's yacht in international waters. Fallar's scheme was discovered by Dick Tracy, who decided to catch Intro in the act of receiving the stolen gold. Tracy arranged for Intro's "board" to be arrested on the Moon, then proceeded to the rendez-vous with Intro's yacht using decoy gold (actually wooden bars painted gold). Intro detected the subterfuge when some of the "gold" bars fell overboard and floated, rather than sinking. He instructed his subordinates on his yacht to open fire on Tracy. Tracy and his team responded, and, using a Moon-built atomic laser beam, vaporized the yacht and all the people aboard it. His daughter, Miss Intro, also became a criminal. Notes *Tracy's destruction of Intro's yacht and all the people aboard it is one of the more extreme examples of creator Chester Gould's heavy-handedness with regard to justice and the police's use of force. Tracy vaporizes the yacht apparently without consideration that there may be innocent, non-combatant parties aboard. * In the Sunday strip depicting the yacht's destruction, we see no fewer than 11 submachine guns firing at the Space Coupe through individual portholes, each fired by an individual gunman. Adding to that Mr. Intro himself, the two painted woman lookouts/divers, two more men shooting at the Space Coupe while standing on deck, plus a third man standing on deck who wasn't firing at the Space Coupe, and Tracy would've killed at least 17 people when his laser vaporized the yacht. * There is a bit of comic relief when one of his subordinates shoots at him--another subordinate remarks "You Fool-Intro wears bullet proof underwear" and Intro remarks "AND YOU DON'T." * Mr. Intro's various eccentricities seem to be an attempt by Gould to duplicate the success that he had had with Mr. Bribery earlier in the 1960s. Mr. Intro does not seem to have endured as much in the popular consciousness. * As stated above, Intro's real name/face are never shown. Some readers have seen this as an indication that Gould may have intended to reveal Intro's identity as a previously established character at some point. Several theories exist about who Intro could have been (see the TALK page for this character), and it remains to be seen if any subsequent creative team will address the issue. Category:Deceased Category:Villains Category:Gang Bosses